Purity At Its Finest

So this morning I woke up at around 6am due to the rooster crows outside my window. It is an awesome alarm clock, I guess farmers had their reasons back in the day. So at around 8am I was suppose to go to the airport to pick up my bags with a driver. But of course being on Haitian time, that means anywhere between 1 to 3 hours delayed. So the driver comes strolling in at around 11am and eats breakfast. We took off around 11:30am for the airport. It took us about an hour and a half to get there due to traffic. We got to the Air France baggage services and it was like seriously a huge mountain of bags within the gates. I was getting a headache just from looking at it, but thankfully, my bags were just right in front and next to each other. How lucky is that???? We got my bags and we headed back to the orphanage. On the way back we dropped off some things for the drivers' wife at a local university. I really needed to go to the bathroom, so I went to use the school's toilets. The driver was concerned that it wasn't "proper" enough for a foreigner to use. I reassured him that it was not going to be a problem. They had toilets and everything, just no toilet paper. This is a normal occurrence for Haiti, that's why we always carry toilet paper and hand sanitizers with us. Went back to the orphanage and it took us another hour or so due to traffic. The driver was blasting the radio, which was carrying his favorite song, "let's do it tonight" by Neyo and Pitbull. I had a good laugh out of that one.

Back at the orphanage, the American Airlines teams had already started to paint the orphanage walls. There was a team from Texas, Miami, and the local Haitian team. They all volunteered to come paint the orphanage. It is part of the American Giving project. So everyone was in the same T-shirts and all had a brush in hand. I joined in on all the fun and started to paint. All the adolescents of the orphanage worked really hard and we had a blast. We probably got more paint on ourselves than the actual walls, but just a small detail. I felt that they really needed that today, to laugh about silly things, just so they can forget about all the hard stuff that they are going through everyday. We had a blast.

After painting all day, the Americans and I headed over to Manmie's pool and took a dip. It was very cooling and refreshing at the end of a long day. Dinner was served and it was, once again, a giant feast! We all chatted about our lives and how awesome Haiti is. I had a great time with the people. I feel really fortunate to be able to be apart of this great team here in Lamardelle! I cannot wait to start working full-time and contributing for the foundation.

So more painting tomorrow....I'm mean with my brush...watch out walls...you are about to be whitewashed....